


Dead Man Walking

by The_Girl_Who_Got_Tired_of_Waiting



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, possible johnlock - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-07
Updated: 2013-12-07
Packaged: 2018-01-03 22:27:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1073774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Girl_Who_Got_Tired_of_Waiting/pseuds/The_Girl_Who_Got_Tired_of_Waiting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock did come home once in those three years after the fall. Just once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Man Walking

He comes home once.

Just once.

About a year and a half after the fall.

(One year, seven months, 3 days, 4 hours and about 27 minutes after)

It is not intentional. He is passing through Heathrow airport, as close as he has been to home in a long time and still an aching chasm apart from it. From John.

He’s only supposed to be changing planes, from one long haul flight straight to another.

His outgoing flight is first delayed, and then cancelled due to unprecedented weather conditions at the other end.

(The word ‘freak’ is used)

And so he finds himself in London, where he has been so careful to avoid.

(Just being here is putting John in danger)

He leaves the airport, hood up, head down, keep walking. Could be anyone, going anywhere. One of a thousand faceless bodies passing through the streets of the capital.

An almost masochistic urge builds up inside of him.

(I can’t go. I want to go. I can’t stop myself from going)

Like the wreckage of a broken satellite, he finds himself being pulled, as if by gravity, in an orbit that drags him ever closer to that one forbidden goal.

His body is battered, his mind tired, his will weak.

He gets on a packed tube on the Bakerloo Line. Could still be anyone, could still be going anywhere.

He has no memory of the journey, other than the bodies pressed tight around him, both his cover and the potential for his undoing. One recognition and it’d all be over.

He does not remember deciding to get off, or how his feet carry him to his destination.

(Lights off, flat empty, panic building)

A member of the homeless network, one who had helped orchestrate The Fall, tells him John is out, with friends. A fact that soothes and stings in equal measure.

He focusses on the positive, does not let the negative take hold.

(Already so close, might as well go that final step)

He goes round to the back alley, where the warm glow of the downstairs flat informs him Mrs Hudson is inside, watching TV, possibly already dozing.

(London will not fall that night)

A smile creeps onto his face and hurts the still healing bruises there.

Like a cat, he climbs on top of the bins that he once threw a man onto for hurting his landlady.

From the bins to the drainpipe to the sill to the open window and finally inside.

(Home)

His breathing sounds perversely loud in the still flat, disturbing something almost holy. Like laughing at a crime scene.

His body follows routine and habit.

He pulls off his stinking clothes and shoves them in the washing machine, short cycle, hauls his stinking body to the bathroom.

(He’d already broken every self-imposed rule. Might as well make the most of it)

He showers in the dark. A light seen from the street in a supposedly empty flat might be the tipping point.

Warm water and soap for the first time in weeks. He washes dried blood out of his hair. He rotates his shoulders and closes his eyes as the knots in his back began to untense.

He uses John’s toothbrush without looking up, not wanting to catch a glimpse of his own reflection in the dark, misted mirror.

He’s a dead man walking, a ghost, and ghosts aren’t meant to have reflections and he doesn’t think he’d recognise what he saw there anyway.

An idea occurs to him, one so ridiculous that he is unaware how he, of all people could possibly think it.

(You could leave a message for John here, write it on the fogged up glass with your finger tip)

Stupid thought.

What could he possibly say, anyway?

(I’m alive, I’m safe, I’m home)

He takes out John’s medical kit and tends to wounds that really need a doctor, but there’s only one doctor Sherlock trusts. He changes the bandage on his arm, binds two fingers that may be broken.

He applies plasters to his heels, blistered from walking without rest.

Back in the kitchen he pulls on his still damp clothes. Sweatshirt still ripped, jeans still torn, but at least cleaner, smelling fresher than before. He might avoid the glares of the check-in staff when he returns to the airport.

(Really should be going now)

He makes toast and eats it in the dark, washing it down with milk drank straight from the carton. His stomach protests the sudden intake of food after so long deprived. He really should eat more often. He’s no good to anyone if he faints from lack of sustenance.

And now he really has stayed too long. Far longer than he intended.

(Never intended this at all)

But as he stands to leave his gaze drifts to the living room, that he has skirted around since entering the flat, and to the empty armchair.

Not his, but John’s.

Again he goes against everything sense and reason is telling him.

He first sits in the chair, then tucks his feet under himself, then finally lets his head rest upon the well-worn armrest, and the jumper that has been discarded there. He breathes in the warm smell of home and safety and comfort. One hand clutches at the wool.

His eyes close, just as they had in the shower.

He could sleep here. He could stay here.

He wonders if Mycroft still bugs the flat, if his brother might go back, over hours of footage of John, and in the middle spot Sherlock, asleep in John’s armchair.

The idea makes him smile, and he almost wishes it were truth.

But then there are voices in the street outside and it’s probably just passers-by, but it could be John and it could be someone far less welcome. It jolts him out of his stupor.

(What are you _doing_ here?!)

He’s out of the chair in a heartbeat, through the flat on feet both light and fast, going on muscle memory more than sight.

It’s not until he’s back on the tube that he realises he’s still holding the jumper.

He should discard it, or better yet, burn it. It’s a trace, a link to the real him and should be disposed of, just like the false identities he’s been living under.

He keeps it.

(Sentiment)

He leaves London the next day and tries to forget.

He uses, once, and finds the high unsatisfactory, the dulled senses intolerable.

When he finally does return he tells John many things he’d rather not divulge, many things he will never say again. But he does not tell him this. He does not know if it will ease John’s anger or make it worse, if it makes Sherlock a weak man, or a very strong one.

So he never finds out that John noticed. He never hears how John was spooked upon returning to his flat to find it as he had left it, but changed subtly, in ways he could not place. It was something in the air, in the smell of toast and shampoo. Milk he was sure he had purchased yesterday missing from the fridge. He searches for his missing jumper and finds instead a scarf Sherlock had forgotten he had been wearing in his haste to leave.

Sherlock never learns that it was that night that John Watson, medical man of logic and reason, bravery and loyalty, began believing in ghosts.


End file.
